Carla is on her way to safety, Rennin thinks with satisfaction. He sighs deeply, looking over the miasma of people yelling, calling or shouting curses at the soldiers, then slowly turns to face the city.
Not far beyond the crowd the streets are completely deserted; the stark contrast to the madness of the exiting queues is extreme.
“Piece of cake,” he says in the words of Basil Fawlty.
Now comes the tricky bit.
Caufmann enters a heavily restricted room on Arca Drej’s level of the lab. This room is at the far end of the hall, constructed underneath the lab proper, personally funded plus some skimmed off the books. The project was done using the sewer system to bring in the required parts.
The room is cylindrical with six pillars around the centre and made from a smooth substance that looks like black rock. The time is fast approaching when he’ll need to move Drej but Drake certainly was correct about not being able to do it alone.
His heart is pounding, and he is not sure what to do. This room holds his greatest treasure, at one of the heaviest costs. He has four CryoZaiyon androids here, their stasis pods masquerading as solemn black support pillars, still powered by their own discrete solar generator far above the surface.
They were once intended for the only survivors of the Venus III massacre, but something went very wrong during the retrieval. Forgal Lauros knew they wouldn’t live long after they arrived back on Earth, so Caufmann hid himself first. Not long after, just as Forgal predicted, the survivors began dying. Forgal flagged the position of their bodies in a coded message only Caufmann would understand, giving him a chance to collect their bodies and hide them. They weren’t dead, Forgal had incapacitated them with a drug Caufmann designed to knock them out, providing the appearance of death.
The first was Advanced Infantry Trooper Sephirlin Darrad. He was one of the first batch of units built. He was an exemplary solo mission unit, capable of both long and short-term missions behind enemy lines. Forgal and Darrad never saw eye to eye, but he was always a very useful tool.
The next was a captain, Xelxor Akcoda. He was part of the Devastator Program. Built with a heavier chassis than most, the Devastator units were shock troops during the war. Deployed in pods, they were used to pave the way for the Wolf-droid dropships that had once rained like a terrible meteor shower onto the battlefield. Poor Akcoda, last of the Devastators.
Then followed Angelien Zillah, a gargantuan captain of seemingly limitless endurance. She and Saifer Veidan had spent a great deal of the war fighting on the frontline. For a while, Caufmann remembers, the pair of them spent so much time fighting he didn’t know if they’d ever be able to stop. Their personalities were so different but at the core, their drives were the same. Pain.
The retrieval mission was going as smoothly as could be expected, things were looking up, then something terrible happened. Forgal and Saifer both actually died at the same time and were lost to him. As far as Caufmann was concerned, any plans they had died with them.
He was stunned, to say the least. He contemplated shutting down the other pods, allowing the last three CryoZaiyons some final peace; but he discovered he couldn’t do it when it came time to flip the switch.
Each pillar has a particular arrangement of glyphs inscribed at the base, symbols Caufmann invented. Each set of glyphs is the identity of the android within. He looks to the pillar inscribed with the name ‘Nexarien Decora’. He stoops, and in one smooth movement sweeps aside the “N” glyph, exposing the hidden plate beneath. Pressing it firmly, the base snaps up and out revealing monitors and a keyboard. The vital signs of the android inside are strong.
He made this tomb for himself as a kind of requiem for the CryoZaiyon he once was. That android is very really dead as far as he’s concerned. He doesn’t even recognise himself anymore. He built the pillar with full functionality, if a day comes that he finds himself no longer able to continue. And with him would end the last of the CryoZaiyons.
Eventually, though, he found another use for it.
Caufmann had only been Head of Research for five years when the unbelievable occurred. A CryoZaiyon emergency beacon activated.
Caufmann picked up the reading instantly. There was yet another survivor, but this unit couldn’t have gone to Venus III. Caufmann thought it must be a trap, and fought viciously with himself whether to investigate or not. The transponder ID wasn’t active and that was too suspicious to be considered.
A day later, a call from Van Gower affirmed that Iyatoya’s long-range scanners had picked up a CryoZaiyon distress call.
Van Gower went berserk.
Caufmann recognised the reaction as genuine and ended the call, cursing himself bitterly for not investigating sooner. He didn’t know who it was, but he would find out, personally.
It was the first time since the war ended he’d held an assault rifle. Caufmann casually appropriated the helicopter assigned to the abduction of viable targets designated for ‘high-level’ experiments. So in the interests of plausible deniability, it contained no tracker, ID transponder, or any other distinguishing marks, while in possession of a sturdy stealth system. Caufmann piloted silently across Switzerland, heading directly for the signal’s originator.
Caufmann found the location most odd; the Swiss border was neutral ground. He couldn’t fathom what a CryoZaiyon would be doing there.
He found the unit in the mountains, a female. Females weren’t rare in the CryoZaiyon army, but they weren’t as common as males. This was a trooper he’d thought dead a decade before.
She had been shot repeatedly during some kind of escape into the mountains. With her cold blood, and snow all around, she’d become trapped in deep freeze. Caufmann was halfway through breaking her out when Special Forces bearing Iyatoya insignia began showing up on his radar. It was a standard kill squad of six. Three infantry, a medic, a sniper and heavy weapons.
Caufmann had disabled enough of his circuitry by that stage to be completely invisible to their scanners. Their headwear used a filter to search out movement and specific CryoZaiyon traits so Caufmann simply moved to the side, remaining still. They all walked into view once they assumed the area was secure. They called in their location, giving an estimate of their return.
It was their death sentence.
Caufmann stepped out calmly, killing three of them almost unnoticed. The next two never got time to actually see him, but the last looked straight at his glowing eyes coming out of the shadows, but only for an instant before his death.
He took the unconscious unit, who he had identified as Amber Antares, back to his helicopter. He patched her up as best he could but she wouldn’t wake. He tried transfusing some of his own blood to her since CryoZaiyon blood types were universal. At least they were supposed to be but Saifer Veidan was flagged to never give blood due to his many anomalies. Even after getting her back to the lab and repairing all the damage there was too much trauma for her to be brought round.
The last time he saw Antares personally was the closing conflict of the Jupiter Sieges. She’d gone back to Earth with the others afterwards, and during the GA clean up where the last pockets of resistance were beaten down she was registered MIA after her craft was shot down over Europe.
Since he couldn’t bring her round, he placed her in his personal tomb capsule where her body would slowly heal completely. That was eight years ago. He’d never intended to leave her there so long, but as each day passed he found less and less reason to try and revive her. He eventually thought it best to let her sleep alongside the others.